May 15, 2010

Off the Beaten Track, Looking for Modern Pterosaurs

Let's look at three less-well-known web sites.

Live Pterodactyl (by Nathaniel Coleman, no close relation to Loren Coleman, but still a cryptozoologist)

What nocturnal creature flies without feathers, according to myth transforms itself into a human form, and is feared by many humans who hand down the stories; also, part of the myth is that it will sometimes put the bite on humans. No, it's not the European Dracula vampire; I forgot to mention that it has a long tail, a head crest, and a body form that has been identified with the silhouette of a Sordes Pilosus Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur . . .

Many species of Flying Fox fruit bat live in the countries that surround Papua New Guinea: Australia and Indonesia, and those further west: Malaysia and India. But none of the big bats have the amazing pterosaur-like characteristics of the ropen: long head crest and Rhamphorhynchoid-like long tail. In addition, at least one species of ropen has a mouth "like a crocodile" mouth.

I suddenly saw, parallel with the water, quite a distance away, a flying object that was strange. Why? Because we knew it was quite far away, but it was as big as a regular bird would appear up close." (The thing flew over the men.) The account in the book continues, "I know what it was. It wasn't a heron; it wasn't a vulture; it wasn't an albatross." The eyewitness was shocked to see that the creature had both a head crest (common in Pterodactyloids) and a long tail with a "diamond tip" (common in Rhamphorhynchoids).

A report of a large flying creature in Sherman Oaks, California, suggests similarities to the ropen of Papua New Guinea. . . . “It was a very large, winged creature that was gliding maybe 100 yards above us . . . a glow or reflection on the wings . . . The man estimated the wingspan: ten to fifteen feet; the girlfriend estimated twenty feet."